Nature and National Identity after Communism: Globalizing the Ethnoscape (review)

It is often assumed that, as globalization extends its reach, the diversity and distinctiveness of national identities and cultures will be eroded. Integration into the global economy and the concurrent flow of information, ideas, and the ethos of capitalism by societies that have until recently stood at the fringes of the global marketplace have led to expectations of, if not total homogenization, at least less distinctive and powerful national identities. For some, this projection is viewed positively as a trend that will gradually lessen ethnic and nationalist conflict, while for others, it is bemoaned as the road to the eventual "McDonaldization" of the world. In Nature and National Identity After Communism: Globalizing the Ethnoscape, however, Schwartz challenges the underlying assumption and argues quite convincingly that, rather than undermining national identity, in the case of post-Soviet Latvia integration into the global economy has prompted both an examination and resurgence of key elements of the Latvian national identity.

Focusing on attitudes toward nature, Schwartz examines how the globalizing process of integration into the European Union has brought longstanding beliefs about the Latvian national identity into question, with imaginings of the rural landscape at the center of contestation. Using competing visions of the Latvian rural landscape as a lens, Schwartz illuminates the powerful pressures on societies being pulled into a global web of interactions, leading some members to embrace the new internationalism as a remolded element of the nation's identity, and others to turn inward and hold tightly to more traditional visions of the nation's identity. It is through this contestation of inward and outward looking visions that the impact of globalization on Latvia is examined.

The book opens with a theoretical introduction, followed by three chapters exploring the historic role of rural agrarian landscapes in Latvia's national identity from the 1850s through early 1990s (Part I), then turning to ongoing challenges to this agrarian nationalist vision that have surfaced under the intense pressures generated by Latvia's "return to Europe" and integration into the European Union (Part II). Both the history-based chapters of Part I and contemporary chapters of Part II are built around case studies, with Part I laying the foundation, establishing visions of the rural landscape as central and enduring (though not monolithic) components of national identity throughout Latvia's history. Part II builds on these findings and explores internationalist challenges to these traditional visions as the European governmental and non-governmental organizations move in to promote a new vision of rural landscapes. These case chapters are based on extensive field research building on an impressive array of primary sources and interviews, and are both empirically rich and tightly focused around the questions posed in the introductory chapter. The book is also beautifully and evocatively written, with unusually accessible theoretical discussions mingling fluidly with detailed depictions of the many facets of Latvian agrarian life.

In her introduction, Schwartz explores the nexus of nature and concepts of the nation. Her discussion delves into theoretical debates on the malleability of national identity, with Schwartz taking an intermediate position that nonetheless "come[s] down on the side of durability against malleability, at least in the modern era" (p. 19). Using environmental narratives of the rural landscape as her lens, she frames her study around the contestation between agrarian nationalists and internationalists with competing visions of the rural landscape. While the agrarian nationalists have tended to look inwards to find national identity, viewing Latvia as a "nation of farmers," with a cultivated agrarian landscape, internationalists have turned their attention outward, seeing Latvia far more as a crossroads between East and West. In Part I, Schwartz examines this competition between inward and outward visions of the Latvian identity by tracing Latvia's national awakening from the mid-1800s through its brief interwar experience of independent statehood, attempts to remake the rural ethnoscape under communism, and the resurgence of the agrarian nationalist vision in the first decade of post-communist...